Author: Dorey Delikowski

As a school psychologist and a 2nd year student in the School Mental Health Advanced Practice Program at Loyola, I am in the midst of a school change project in my small rural school district. The project I’m steeped in is to build teacher capacity to implement a tier I social and emotional curriculum in our 4 year old kindergarten through 6th grade classrooms. Professional development and on-going training is a big part of the success of this project. As we train our staff to teach the SEL curriculum to our students, we can’t neglect to acknowledge that to teach SEL to students, we as adults must be competent in our own social and emotional awareness and abilities. If we engage our staff in ongoing adult social and emotional learning, we will hopefully foster a supportive environment not only for students, but for staff as well.